Apopka plans to join St. Cloud as Wi-Fi city

January 3, 2007|By Erin Ailworth, Sentinel Staff Writer

Apopka plans to join St. Cloud in creating a citywide wireless Internet system.

At a meeting last month, Apopka city commissioners directed chief administrative officer Richard Anderson to negotiate a contract with Motorola for the system commonly called Wi-Fi, short for "wireless fidelity."

Anderson said he hopes to have the almost $2.5 million project in place within a year. He expects basic service to be free to residents and businesses.

"If somebody would like more bandwidth," he added, "then you charge them for additional bandwidth."

St. Cloud, which in 2006 became the first city in the area to offer free wireless service to residents, is still tweaking its system. The city is looking to equip police cars with networked cameras that could be monitored from the police station. Also, St. Cloud's system is expected to give city workers the ability to write reports in the field.

Apopka's wireless system also would benefit the city's staff and emergency-service providers, Anderson said.

"It gives us another bridge of communication for all our police and fire units," he said. "Our police officers . . . could run around with a hand-held radio and do background checks [on the Internet]."

Police Chief Chuck Vavrek said the technology will help streamline his officers' efforts.

"The officer can be in one place and monitoring another," Vavrek said. "It gives us an extra eye that you typically don't have."

Anderson said getting the wireless system up and running would require putting modems on utility poles around the city, and possibly on some taller homes.

The modems -- an estimated 25 to 30 per square mile -- will act as transmitters, creating a cloud of continuous service over the city, he said. A person with a laptop with wireless capability should be able to access the Internet from anywhere in Apopka.